Transitions & Triggers: Navigating Back-to-School During Eating Disorder Recovery
Regardless of your age or life stage, the back-to-school period is always an exciting and crazy time. While January tends to be more commonly known for new beginnings and fresh starts, September can be associated with this as well…why? It’s a period of change. A change of seasons as most of us transition from summer to fall, and for many, it’s a change of schedules and lifestyles. I don’t know about you, but this time is always marked by a mix of emotions: a bit sad to put away my colorful bathing suit and at the same time longing for the first backyard bonfire where I can wear my favorite cozy sweater; bummed that summer BBQs are wrapping up, and looking forward to cider and donuts at the apple orchard and cider mill in a couple months.
For those with mental health struggles, this period of change can bring an increase in stress and maladaptive coping strategies, and especially for those with an eating disorder, an increased reliance on disordered or unhelpful behaviors to manage the discomfort. Is there a different way to handle this transition? Keep reading to learn some tips to help you or someone you know manage the back-to-school season while staying on track with eating disorder recovery.
As a dietitian specialized in eating disorders, individual and group client sessions in August and September are filled with conversations about how to prepare for the back to school season. Can you relate to any of these questions or statements:
- How will I manage eating with my busy schedule?
- What should I do when I get stressed out and don’t feel hungry?
- I forgot to eat my lunch in between my classes!
- I just don’t have time to think about grocery shopping or cooking.
- What if my body looks different than last year?
- Everyone else looks better than me in their clothes, ugh.
- I have to make sure I’m fueling my body “right” for soccer.
Whether you are a student struggling with disordered eating, a caregiver, friend or family member, an educator, or an athletic coach, there are some helpful things to keep in mind to make this time of year feel better for everyone’s physical and mental health.
Students with an eating disorder
Let’s start with the student going back to school and struggling with disordered eating and/or their eating disorder, and focus on how to prepare for and embrace the change associated with the back-to-school season without leaning on the eating disorder to cope.
This usually involves a few key steps:
- Brainstorm and Reflect: Take the time to check in with yourself to gauge what you want or need for the upcoming semester or school year. By thinking through these details and establishing a starting point, you can then think about how to set yourself up for success. Ask yourself…
- What have been previous struggles or successes when going back to school?
- What are your goals for the upcoming semester?
- In an ideal world, what do you want this school year to look and feel like?
- Set Yourself Up for Success: Being successful during a period of so much change involves establishing structure. Now, I get it, structure doesn’t always sound fun, but it also doesn’t have to look a particular way or need to be rule-based. Remember, structure is intended to provide guidance in chaotic moments and make your life easier.
- Establish a schedule for meals and snacks during the week and weekends and try your best to stick to it! This will help in ensuring you eat enough and in regulating your metabolism, hunger, and fullness cues.
- Set reminders on your phone or computer to alert you to eat meals and snacks according to your schedule. This can be super helpful when initiating a routine until it feels like a habit!
- Eliminate triggers where it’s possible. Consider going through your social media to unfollow accounts that are not supportive to your goals. Have a friend who isn’t supporting you in the way you’d like? Try setting a boundary!
- Professional Support: Do you have a supportive team of clinicians that you trust and with whom you can openly discuss your struggles? Don’t wait until you are struggling to find a team. A team can consist of a combination of different providers: dietitian, therapist, physician, and psychiatrist, just to name a few.
- Family and Friend Support: Do you want family and friends to be involved in your recovery? What does support mean to you? Not everyone knows what this looks like or what feels good for you so be sure to communicate with your supporters.
- Join a mental health or eating disorder support group to meet other people going through similar struggles. You don’t have to do this alone!
- Make Time for You and Your Recovery: How can you expect to feel good if you aren’t thinking about what you need, what you enjoy, and what you want? Make Motivators Accessible During Hard Times:
- Find Motivation: When things get hard, have your key motivators in a place that you can easily access. Maybe you list them out in a note on your phone, have visual representations of your motivators in your room, or write them in your journal and read through them each day. Doing this gives less space to your eating disorder thoughts and more space to the things you genuinely care about!
- Prioritize Self-care and Stress Management: Allow yourself to rest. Rest is absolutely necessary and not something that needs to be earned. Include rest regularly and especially when your body craves it. Think about what you genuinely enjoy doing in your free time. What allows you to feel your best or feel relaxed? What makes you happy? Try to include time for you each day- maybe it’s 5 minutes, maybe it’s 1 hour whatever fits into your schedule! What do you do when things get hard? Do you have coping skills in your back pocket when you feel stressed, anxious, sad, overwhelmed, or angry? Try making a coping basket with things like essential oils, stress balls or fidgets, your favorite book, a soft and squishy pillow, etc. and keep it somewhere you can access in times of high emotions.
- Incorporate Weekly Challenges: Did it feel like you had more time in the summer to include challenges for your eating disorder? Fair point, AND, it’s so important to continue to include those challenges even when your school schedule begins. Why? It helps show your brain that you can tolerate challenges and do not need to lean on the eating disorder when things get difficult. It’s important of course, to meet yourself where you are at. For example, maybe in the summer you include 2 challenge foods a week so during the school year try to do 1 challenge food a week. Tweak according to what feels doable but don’t let the challenges disappear altogether.
- Be Honest: It’s as simple as that. Be honest with yourself, your peers, your family, your professional supporters. It won’t get you anywhere to pretend that everything is ok and there’s nothing wrong with admitting that you’re struggling. Create a list of signs that may indicate that you are in need of more support and maybe leaning on the eating disorder more than you’d like. Some people use a red light, yellow light, green light, others use red flags. Whatever analogy resonates with you, give it a try!
Tips for family & friends
Alright, we’ve covered what you as a student can do to navigate eating disorder recovery during transition periods but what about things that other supporters can do? For caregivers, friends and family, let’s focus on tips to best support your loved one in managing the transition back to school:
- Do not include diet or body talk in the household. Just don’t do it! There are many more interesting things to talk about each day!
- Normalize Eating: Establish eating routines and schedules for you and your family to ensure eating is prioritized similarly to sleep or work.
- Provide a variety of food options including all food groups (carbohydrates, fats, protein) and different types of foods (processed, fresh, snack foods, meals, etc)
- Try to make eating times fun and stress free by having relaxing music playing in the background or engaging in neutral topics of conversation.
- Keep Communication Open: Ask questions and be curious about what your loved one is experiencing. Do not assume you know better or understand another person’s experience.
- Encourage your loved one to listen to and respond to their body cues to build trust in those cues.
- Check Your Biases: If you have struggles with mental health or disordered eating, reach out to get the support you need so as to not influence your loved one.
Make sure to visit anad.org/loved-ones for more resources on supporting your child.
Tips for educators & coaches
Finally, we have the people who tend to spend time with students in a more public setting. I often hear that teachers or coaches just don’t know what to do when they see a student struggling. They don’t want to embarrass the student or make it worse! For the educator or athletic coach, this section is for you, use this list of things to keep in mind when talking with your students or student athletes.
- Please, please, please NO diet, food or body talk. Do not pretend to be an expert in nutrition if you are not. Do not make comments on a student’s body or size- even if you think it is a compliment. This puts unnecessary and unhelpful focus on body size and appearance and often leads to body comparisons between students.
- Encourage and Respect Students Boundaries: Some students appreciate being encouraged and pushed (kindly) and others need to be met where they are at. If you are unsure, ask the student what they prefer.
- Use Inclusive Language: This helps to create a safe space in the classroom or on the athletic field so students feel comfortable. Examples: avoid gendered terms like “guys” or “ladies” and use terms like “everyone”, encourage teamwork and individual value, create space for modifications- “do what feels best for you today!”
- Keep Communication Open: If you notice something and feel the need to talk to a student, do so in a nonjudgmental way in a private space away from other peers. It can be difficult to discuss things related to eating or body so try to respect the privacy of your student.
- Always ask questions to understand and don’t assume you know what is going on with the student.
ANAD has additional resources available for educators and school support staff at anad.org/educators.
We're in this together!
At the end of the day, no matter how you are connected and involved in the back-to-school season, there’s something to take from this blog. Maybe it’s creating a supportive environment for open communication? Maybe it’s encouraging eating with your friends when they say they’re hungry! Or, it could be simply setting a meal and snack schedule for you and your family to model that eating is a necessary part of the day. This year, as the seasons change and a new school year begins, think about what you can do to create a supportive and positive environment and decrease the reliance on maladaptive coping strategies.
Learn more about Nikki and her virtual private practice at www.nutritionwithn.com.
